


between two lungs

by youatemytailor



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, THE REUNION HUG THAT WE WERE ALL OF US WRONGFULLY DENIED, all is well forever and ever and TI is a fake bitch whomst i dont know, flint has a lot of emotions what's new tbh, fluff mostly, just imagine careless whisper playing in the background of the reunion that's pretty much this fic, set during 403, silver is radiant and alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 05:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12647316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youatemytailor/pseuds/youatemytailor
Summary: It's the strangest feeling, someone you love coming back from the dead.





	between two lungs

**Author's Note:**

> loosely based on the tumblr prompt _top of head kisses._

It goes without saying; Flint has a lot of experience with loss.

He knows it intimately. The foolish, stubborn denial that it brings. The way reality draws back like teeth into something inconceivable, unnatural— time passing carelessly, without warning or waning or pause. He knows, also, the way grief returns full force when you least expect it. How it wraps its fingers around your throat; shorts your breath; drags you kicking and screaming into panic, then rage, then submission.

Then rage, again. Again, and again, and again, until it burns a hole right through the center of everything.

Flint has a lot of experience with loss. And still he has no idea—not a single fucking  _clue_ —what to do when something that he’s lost is returned to him.

He does learn. Eventually.

Twice.

* * *

 

It’s the strangest feeling, someone you love coming back from the dead.

For starters, Flint’s legs have stopped working. He can’t seem to get them to obey his commands no matter how hard he tries; can’t seem to convince them to move over the embankment, trudge through the hot sand, draw closer to the boulder against which Silver is leaning.

Leaning.  _Alive_ and leaning.

The shock abates, and at last he is able to put one foot in front of the other. But now there’s a flutter in Flint’s throat; he can feel it, the water surging in his chest. He wipes the blade against his trouser leg and squints against the sun, swallows, as if it’ll kill dead the skittering thing in his belly; screaming disbelief fighting the hesitant joy that’s threatening to break through, sunlight stealing through the cracks of his too-stubborn grief.  

There’s a man sitting next to him, Flint notes absently. Every observation he makes is absent going forward; the entire world has shrunk to the head of a pin with Silver at the center of it; he’s got a gash across his forehead and sand in his hair; his wrists look red and raw, like they’ve been bound, Flint thinks; and Flint wants to take them in his hands, suddenly, wants to run his fingers over the proof of Silver’s absence, wants to wipe them from his skin, from time itself. 

When Silver rises at last, he is smiling. That alone is enough; it uproots Flint from where he is standing frozen and has him rushing forward to meet Silver in the middle, and without thinking—without a single fucking thought but  _alive, alive, alive_ —he pulls Silver into an embrace. There’s a small, barely audible grunt of surprise, and then nothing but this: nothing but Silver, whole and steady and breathing. 

Reality, as it is wont to do, creeps in slowly. 

The sound of the tides are first, followed by the sea gulls squawking overhead, sharp and ugly. Then the intrusive clearing of a throat and the crunch of sand under receding footsteps; one by one it all comes back until Flint is painfully aware of every sensation at once. Silver’s hair in his face, Flint’s mouth pressed into the strands. Sand everywhere. Silver’s chest, warm against his own. Flint’s fingers, digging into Silver’s salt-stained shirt and sure to leave marks in their wake. Above all he is aware of the way Silver is standing; rigid and lifeless and still as stone. 

Face burning, Flint begins to pull back, “Sorry, I—”

It is only then, only then that Silver truly returns; takes a breath and huffs it out, like his head has broken water; Flint feels it hit the side of his neck, feels it run down the entire length of his back like a ray of light— _alive, alive, alive,_  his blood sings, warm for the first time in days—and then Silver’s arm snakes up, grips Flint by the shoulder, and tugs him straight down again. 

This hug is tighter. Flint feels the air rush out of his lungs and into Silver’s hair, feels them fill again in time with Silver’s own; the two of them expanding and collapsing, expanding and collapsing, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, ad mortem.

“Took you long enough,” Silver huffs, and Flint can hear it, can  _hear_ the grin taking shape in his voice; curling like the tendrils of a familiar flame burning in the hearth of a home. 

“Took  _you_ long enough,” Flint counters, and Silver shudders against him, his startled chuckle filling Flint’s ears. 

“My apologies,” Silver says when they finally part—Flint has to will his fists to open and  _release_ —but then he’s greeted with Silver’s wonderful fucking grin, so in some ways it isn’t a loss at all. “I got held up. Almost drowned, got captured. It’s a riveting story, truly. I’ll hardly have to embellish it at all in the retelling.”  

At the mention of capture, reality tugs at Flint again and he glances over his shoulder; sees the man that was sitting next to Silver in full color for the first time. He’s standing at a distance now, far from them and far from the men, his harsh frown turned towards the horizon. Something in Flint bristles, spiked like bracken, and Silver drops a hand on his forearm. 

“It’s all right,” he says, and Flint turns to find him watching, careful and fond. “I talked my way out of it. It is highly unlikely that he’ll turn on us now.” 

“Good,” Flint says, a little vicious, and Silver smiles wider. “Saves me the trouble of killing him then.” 

They look at each other for a beat, and Flint feels himself being pulled in again, that sense of buoyancy returning, tugging his mouth into a matching smile. And then Silver squeezes his arm, retracts his hand, adjusts his crutch; and when he looks over at the men next his face has hardened, gone kingly and fearsome. 

They turn together, and walk on. There’s a war to be won, after all.

* * *

 

It is weeks later, and Flint is standing in the middle of a field, his hands finally unbound, the sun on his neck, his heart an anchor weighing heavy in his chest. His rage is no longer vicious but exhausted, and at the end of a long, long rope. 

And then the sky brightens. Everything slows. The man turns, and Flint thinks; it is still the strangest feeling, someone you love coming back from the dead.

(Though it is even stranger, in some ways, when someone you are desperately trying to  _hate_ is responsible for it.)

**Author's Note:**

> can you believe they reunite post series, maybe like 5 years later, and hug again in the exact same way?? amazing, showstopping, canon


End file.
